Just In: Resource Utilization & Editable Gantt charts

Employees are considered the most valuable assets of an organization. The ability to deploy employees effectively against projects enables organizations to utilize and maximize employee productivity. For this, project managers need an efficient system to place the appropriate employees in the right teams at the right time.

Project managers often face questions like how the work to be performed by a team is to be captured, who estimates the amount of effort required, where this information is to be stored and reviewed for accuracy etc. There are no magic shortcuts. You need the right tool that can capture and show the resources utilized within or across all projects of your organization.

The latest update of Zoho Projects offers this crucial feature called Resource Utilization chart, that accurately captures all of the above in a single place. With this chart, you can now get the most out of your valuable resources, i.e., Your Team,to accomplish critical tasks that are overdue by effectively realigning members based on their skills. You can also quickly gain insights into whether your resources are being under, over or optimally utilized in a matter of few minutes.

And…Refreshing new editable Gantt charts!
Before this update: The Gantt chart in Zoho Projects has always been a challenge for us, since everyone used it in their own unique ways. Previously, it didn’t have enough room to capture more details about tasks. And printing the chart was a bit of a hassle when it was loaded with more data.

Here’s what we did:

We reworked the entire Gantt chart design to make it more appealing and useful for all. And of course, made it easier for printing too.
Best of all, now you can simply drag the task bar in either direction and edit your Gantt chart. Isn’t that cool? But it doesn’t stop there. You can also export as PDF and send it across to your team.

We’ve also put together a step-by-step guide to get started – Gantt & Resource utilization.
User Access:
Resource Utilization view is accessible for portal owner, joint admins and project managers. While the editable Gantt is available for all user roles except for client users.

a. Resource utilization / Edit Gantt charts are available for all Premium and Enterprise customers i.e., $299 & $599 annual plans and $35 and $80 monthly plans. It is also available for existing Valuepack 3 customers.

b. The Reports tab, which includes resource utilization and editable Gantt charts (across all projects) is available only for Enterprise customers i.e., $599 annual plan and $80 monthly plan.

Here’s short video explaining the new Gantt chart and Resource utilization features.

About Celina

Product Marketer @Zoho. I am an avid reader, witty and an ambivert by nature. A hybrid of marketing and product management who prefers listening to customers. Connect and talk with me anytime at celina@zohocorp.com

I second Maisie’s comment: The Resource Utilization Chart should take into account the number of hours per tasks, as not all tasks take the entire day. You should look at the resource management module of Mavenlink, Celoxis, and Clarizen which seems to be a lot more robust than Zoho’s.

How can I modify the default period view? One month is often not enough and the worst is that if you are at the end of the present month your visibility is very limited. If you set the correct period and you want to change some detail on a task you loose all the visualization settings and once you are back to the Gantt you visualize again the default period of one month

@stephaniezuri, @roberto, @mario, @brightwise, @kiril, @pehade, @RobsealThanks for all the great suggestions, ideas and views.. :)We’re already working on some crucial features which will be rolled out in subsequent updates.As few users suggested, we’ll accord high priority and work towards adding the project management related features by this year. Stay Tuned !

Being able to edit the date for a task from the task list page would speed things along. since nothing shows up in the charts without a date there needs to be a faster way to add the date. Once the date is added the new Gantt Chart seems to work well.Our planning is fairly general so planning each task to be done in a day works fine for us.

Steps in the right direction. However these features will not be truly helpful until I’m able to add dependencies in the gantt chart view and allocate hours per resource per task since tasks don’t take all day.

Implement a way to disable non-working days such as weekends and statutory holidays and then make task duration entry simpler; only then will Zoho Projects be a super effective tool for measuring estimates.Hourly estimates would also be quite useful since a lot of the tasks we perform don’t take a whole day.

Changing the end and start date on the Gantt chart is already a huge step forward, because the Gantt chart is realy the best and maybe the only way to get a good visual overview.But I also totaly agree with Kiril!For some busines, the 1st remark will be suffucient. For others you absolutely need time based planning.

I’d like to be able to import my technicians from QB Online and be able to show what their schedule is on the calendar coming up. I’d like them to be able to access this portion, but without any other privileges in the Project Manager. Will this be possible?

A couple of concrete suggestions.1. Allow the project to be defined with duration instead of end date. This will allow automatic rescheduling of the entire project if the parent tasks change.2. Allow taks duration in hours rather than days including automatic project duration recalculation if task duration changes.Thanks for great new updates.

I am in agreement with the above users. However, for the way we are using Projects currently, the system provides good value. When and if we are ready for more robustness, we too would want something closer to the growing number of competitors out there, including Clarizen and Dovico which has integrated time tracking.

I think the new features are a good step in the right way.As some other people said before, there is still a lack of features to use Zoho like a integrate planning tool, but this new reports are good enough to be useful for the day-to-day control.In our particular case, where we manage lots of small projects with smalls teams, we can make a good-enough planning using just Zoho features.However, for bigger projects, we have to duplicate some information and set up OpenProj datasheets.Finally. I think you are in the right way, but keep your people working in new features to minimize the gap between Zoho and the market ( and much more expensive ) leaders like Clarizen.Mario

I fundamentally agree with stephaniezuri.Unfortunately, despite having some other very nice fetures in other, more “agile” / “collaborative” oriented areas, Zoho Project sitll lacks a lot in the more traditional Project Management oriented areas and features.Zoho Project Gantt Chart is more a Gantt snapshot: the fact that you are forced to choose among Open and Closed and among Tasks and Milestone and you can only select hard coded periods to display all shows that you can only work and see a limited part of your plan, like using a magnifier.I still look forward to have a proper area for Project/Program Managers, where one can really do the work, moving easily back and forth from a “seagull” view of its Projects down to tasks and resourse details, allowing real planning.Till then I’m forced to use Zoho Project more as a day-to-day collaborative tool for my staff, along with a more complete tool for me to gain the full picture and stay in controll.Roberto

We are *very* excited about tracking resource utilization, but don’t see how this is useful without being able to enter estimated hours for each task.I don’t see any separation between work (actual hours spent on a task) and duration (start/stop, due date on a task)? I’m interested in hearing from someone who finds this useful as is, and how they’re entering information.